He paused; looked up at Miss Belcher, who had squared her elbows on the table in very unladylike fashion; and cleared his throat before proceeding—­

“You will excuse me for mentioning this, but it is an essential part of my story.”

“The Stimcoes,” suggested Miss Belcher, “didn’t pay up—­eh?”

“Mr. Stimcoe—­though a scholar, ma’am—­has suffered from time to time from pecuniary embarrassment.”

“—­Traceable to drink,” interpolated Miss Belcher, with a nod towards Plinny.  “No, sir; you need not look at Harry:  he has told us nothing.  I formed my own conclusions.”

“Mrs. Stimcoe, ma’am—­for I should tell you she keeps the purse—­is too often unable to make two ends meet, as the saying is.  I believe she paid when she could, but somehow my salary has always been in arrear.  I have used remonstrance with her, before now, to a degree which it shames me to remember; yet, in spite of it, I have sometimes found myself on a Saturday, after a week’s work, without a loaf of bread in the cupboard.  I doubt, ma’am, if any one who has not experienced it can wholly understand the power of mere hunger to degrade a man; to what lengths he can be urged, willy-nilly, as it were, by the instinct to satisfy it.  There were Sabbaths, ma’am, when to attend divine worship seemed a mockery; the craving drove me away from all congregations of Christian men and out into the fields, where—­I tell it with shame, ma’am—­I have stolen turnips and eaten them raw, loathing the deed even worse than I loathed the vegetable, for the taste of which—­I may say—­I have a singular aversion.  Well, among my pupils was Harry here, whom I discovered to be the son of an old friend of mine.  I dare to call the late Major James Brooks a friend in spite of the difference between our stations in life—­a difference he himself was good enough to forget.  Our acquaintance began on the Londonderry transport, which I commanded, and in which I brought him home from Corunna to Plymouth in the January of 1809.  It ended with the conclusion of that short and anxious passage.  But I had always remembered Major Brooks as one who approached, if ever man did, the ideal of an officer and a gentleman.  Now at first, ladies, the discovery suggested no thought to me beyond the pleasure of knowing that my old friend was alive and hale, and the hope of seeing Harry grow up to be as good a man as his father.  But by-and-by I found a thought waking and growing, and awake again and itching after I had done my best to kill it, that the Major might be moved by the story of an old shipmate brought so low.  God forgive me, ladies!” Captain Branscome put up a hand to cover his brow.  “The very telling of it degrades me over again; but I came here to make a clean breast, and there is no other way.  I had cross-examined Harry about the Major and his habits—­not always allowing to myself why I asked him many trivial questions.  And then suddenly the temptation